To understand what is desirable to others, we must first learn to empathize. Empathy is central to the entire human-centered design innovation process.

"Storytelling is fundamental to society, culture, and communication. Narrative is the basic structure by which we share our ideas and experiences."

The stories that people tell and the things that people say they do, even if they are different from what they actually do, are strong indicators of their deeply held beliefs about the way the world is. Good designs are built on a solid understanding of these kinds of beliefs and values. We seek to observe and understand their needs, motives, behaviours & dreams, using stories to translate opportunities into meaningful solutions. Learning to recognize those insights is harder than you might think. We need to learn to see things “with a fresh set of eyes”. Tools for empathy and a human-centered mindset can give us those new eyes.

Designing meaningful and innovative solutions that serve your customers begins with gaining deep empathy for their needs, hopes and aspirations for the future.

How we help

We help you determine who to talk to, how to gain empathy, gather stories, and document your observations. We help you to listen to and understand who they are and what they want.

We help you understand how to collect stories that will serve as insight and inspiration. We can equip your team with methods and tips for engaging people in their own contexts to delve beneath the surface.

What we do

Identify Challenge

Identify People to Speak With

Choose Research Methods (Individual and Group Interviews, In-Context Immersion)

Our next goal is to understand the stories and observations: uncovering themes, and analyzing challenges & opportunities, so we can envision future possibilities.

How we help

We help you to generate opportunities and solutions that are applicable to your community. After observing and learning first hand about people and context of use, we help you to synthesize insights and themes into opportunities for designs.

We help your team collaborate in a workshop format to move from concrete to more abstract thinking in identifying themes and opportunities and back to the concrete with solutions and prototypes, visualizing the most powerful insights with low-fi paper sketches, models, flows and mock ups.

We take the top solutions, make them better, and move them toward implementation.

How we help

We help you to decide which ideas are most viable, then refine design ideas by prototyping - making it real so we can observe user interactions and use the feedback to iteratively improve the experience until you are ready to deliver. The realization of solution includes rapid revenue and cost modeling, capability assessment, and implementation planning.

We help your delivery team to translate your vision into value. We use collaborative HCD implementation tools and methods to enable your project teams with a united value based project vision, empathy for people and context of use, and human-test driven iteration.The activities offered in this phase are meant to complement your organization’s existing implementation processes and may prompt adaptations to the way solutions are typically rolled out.